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SEPANG DRAG BATTLE ROUND 3: METAL AND ACCELERATION

SEPANG, JULY 25, 2010: It was a festival of sound and speed last night, as hard metal music competed head-to-head with the deafening revving sounds of modified fine-tuned engines at Round 3 of the Drag Battle.

Over a thousand Drag Battle fans watched the action on the tracks as the sweet scent of the high-octane fuel lingered in the air, intermingled with the fumes from the cars roaring throughout the night, tires screeching on the tracks.

The grandstand reverberated with the sound of fans cheered and roared as the drivers tested their powerful metal machines on the 405-straight line acceleration points, all in the quest to be called champions of the night in Round 3 of the Drag Battle.
Among them were team ST Wangan-ST Powered, well-known seasoned racers in the racing circuit.

The team competed in Category A (4-Wheel Drive Turbo Class), the same category where the team driver Tan Chun Lin had won first place in Round 2 in the team’s Mitsubishi Lancer Evo 9.

 “It took us several months to prepare the car, as we had to modify the car, converting it from a circuit car into a drag car. We had used the same car to compete in the Merdeka Millennium Endurance Race three years ago,” said Kenneth Liang, 37, one of the team managers.

“The cost? Well, we’ve basically lost track. We just kept throwing in money for the car!”, he said with a laugh.

“But I suppose we can roughly estimate that it costs around SGD200,000, including the car itself. So that’s close to half a million ringgit.”

The team had to contend themselves with recording the best time in the category (9.704 seconds) but taking second place in the category as the car had gone slower in the knockout round.

“We wanted to see how powerful the car can be without using the NOS equipment. We just relied on the engine and turbo power, which was 1000HP,” said Kenneth.

Another contender in the Drag Battle’s Round 3 was the Speedline Garage  Team, who took part in their Mazda RX3, driven by seasoned drag racer K. Murali, a.k.a Joe, 30 .  
One of the team member, Neil Naveen, 35, said the team had spent RM10,000 on the car in preparation for the race.

“The spark plugs alone costs us RM1,000, not including other essentials. It took us a month to prepare for the race,” said Neil.

“We were expecting to race in Category C, but we were placed in Category B instead because the officials said that the car has a rotary engine and is supposedly powerful.  

“But ours is an old one, we used the car’s original 13B rotary engine, with only 320HP. The only modification we did was to add Weber carburettor. We couldn’t compete with the other more powerful cars in the same category, obviously, so we lost,” said Neil.

The Drag Battle ended at 2am on Sunday morning, and the winners of the Drag Battle Round 3 were:

CLASS A
1)    SHEIKH MOHD SALIMEE (10.245)
2)    TAN CHUN LIN (10.273) (BEST TIME 9.704)
3)    MOHD SHAHRIL MOHD DHARI

CLASS B
1)    MOHD AMIRULLAH MOHD (11.485)
2)    MOHD FADHIL OTHMAN (11.874)
3)    MOHD AINUL AZRI MOHD AINI (11.555)

CLASS C
1)    ALOYSIUS WEE CHIN KWANG (11.690)
2)    AHMAD FIRDAUS AZMAN (11.851)
3)    MOHD HANAPI ISMAIL (12.073)

CLASS F
1)    SHAHRULNIZAM MD SAIN (13.354)
2)    KALAICHELVAN GOVINDAPILLAI (13.944)
3)    MOHD FAOZI TAHIR

CLASS Fx
1)    MOHD HANAPI ISMAIL
2)    MUHAMMAD ANWAR ROSLAN
3)    NUR FAIZUN NASRI

CLASS G
1)    MOHD ZAMIR AHMAD (13.341)
2)    SAIFUL ASRULLAH RAZALI (16.096)
3)    KAMARUL NAZLAN JAAFAR (12.627)